


Buttons

by olive_garden



Category: Coraline (2009), The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Fake Episode, so Coraline would make a great episode of TMA amirite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 15:49:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26980126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olive_garden/pseuds/olive_garden
Summary: Case #0170910Statement of Coraline Jones regarding a door she found as a child in the Pink Palace Apartments, Oregon.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 64





	Buttons

**Author's Note:**

> so this is absolutely way too long to be an episode, but like. i wanted to go with the general writing style of over describing everything and having way too much setup so here you go lmao
> 
> this is set during season 3 so I could mention the entities considering he only rlly learns about them at the end of season 2
> 
> original idea and permission to write given by @lylahammar on instagram

[ Click. ]

ARCHIVIST

There we go. 

CORALINE

Thanks for the tea, but- ‘ _This might be wine_ ’?

ARCHIVIST

I didn’t buy the mugs, I’ll have you know. Anyway. Set to start?

CORALINE

Yeah. Go ahead. 

ARCHIVIST

Right. Statement of Caroline Jones, regarding...?

CORALINE

It’s  _ Cor _ -aline, actually.

ARCHIVIST

Ah. My apologies.

CORALINE

And it’s about a door I found when I was a kid. My mom insisted I come here, but you guys don’t have to do anything about it. I assure you, it’s taken care of.

ARCHIVIST

Good to hear. Statement recorded direct from subject, 9th October, 2017. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London. 

Statement begins. 

CORALINE

So I just start talking now?

ARCHIVIST

Yes. Just say what happened from start to finish.

CORALINE

Alright. I guess I should start with when I moved houses. 

I was about ten, maybe eleven. I didn’t wanna move, my old school, my old friends were  _ fine _ , but my parents still decided to move to this place called the Pink Palace. It’s an old Victorian mansion that got turned into a set ofapartments. There was Sergey Bobinski upstairs — he was the weirdest guy. Tried to train mice to do a circus act — and April Spink and Miriam Forcible in the basement — they were these retired burlesque actresses who owned way too many Scotty dogs for one house. My parents were working on this gardening catalog and they were having a hard time with it, but little eleven year old me just thought they were being selfish and distant. So, naturally, I went exploring. 

I snapped a dowsing rod from a bush and l went wandering through the garden. Normally, the garden would have been beautiful, surrounding in stone walls and staircases, each bit divided into sections for different plants. But, the trees were barren, the plants in the garden long dead with winter only just growing to an end, but I kept going. I walked along the path I’d been following until a few rocks fell down the hill. I looked up and didn’t see a soul. No one who could’ve pushed them off. So I threw one back. Give them a taste of their own damn medicine. That’s when I heard this awful shriek from a cat. I ran and ran, further into the forest of naked trees, until I found a fairy circle. A little ring of mushrooms in the middle of a clearing. Just sitting there. That cat had followed me and yowled at me once more. I was looking for a well, you see, and I was getting real annoyed that I couldn’t find it. The cat wasn’t telling me where it was, so I lifted my dowsing rod and began spinning around, hoping it would drag me in the right direction. Only for the roar of a motorcycle to break my thoughts. Damn thing nearly ran me right over. It was the landlady’s grandson, Wyborne Lovat, my best friend to this day. I wasn’t impressed by him or his weird stray cat friend at all, when I first met him. I may have been- a  _ bit  _ mean to him. I did call him  _ Why-Were-You-Born _ , I’ll admit, but y’know what, he _was_ being annoying! He made fun of my dowsing rod!

I asked him where this well was and he told me, if I kept jumping about, I’d fall right in. He started digging through the mud that filled the fairy circle and revealed a wooden lid. “See?” he said. “It’s supposed to be so deep that if you fell in and looked up, you’d see a sky full of stars in the middle of the day.”

He said he was surprised to know I’d moved into the Pink Palace. His grandma owned the place and didn’t usually let people with kids into it. 

I told him to go away after his grandma started calling for him. He told me that that ‘dowsing rod’ was covered in poison oak. I had a rash on my hand for ages. Once he was gone, I dropped a little pebble down the hole in the well lid. It had to have taken at least six seconds for it to hit water. I’m sure it was much deeper than how much water had filled it. My mom was unimpressed with my story of how I almost fell down a well and died. She was in no mood to deal with me while working around a neck brace after a small car accident that  _wasn’t my fault_. 

I wasn’t allowed to go and garden, or go exploring in the rain. Too much mud, too much mess. For people making a gardening catalog, they sure didn’t like dirt. 

She did tell me that some kid had left me something. It was from Wybie. He’d found something in his grandma’s trunk, asked if it looked familiar. I unwrapped it from the newspaper and- it was a doll. A doll with blue hair, freckles, a yellow raincoat, and a dragonfly hair clasp. Exactly what I’d been wearing the day we moved in. It looked exactly like me, except it had shiny black buttons in place of its eyes. I didn’t find it as weird as I probably should have. 

My dad was just as uninterested in what I had to say. Told me count all the doors and windows, list everything that’s blue, anything to let him work, uninterrupted. So I went exploring the dusty, damp house. I’m surprised my parents even let us move in, let alone the landlady. There were twelve  _ very  _ leaky windows, twelve  _ very  _ disgusting bugs, one  _ very  _ rusty old water heater. I found the living room last. I set Little Me down on the table, unpacked the snow globes, and got to counting. One boring, blue boy in a  _ painfully  _ boring painting. Four  _ incredibly  _ boring windows. And no more doors. I turned to collect Little Me and find something else to do, but she was gone. Disappeared into thin air. Where was she- it hiding? Turns out, it managed to get itself behind a big, empty box that was leaning against the wall. I knelt down to pick her up when I noticed a bump; a long line running under the wallpaper. Moving the box, I noticed the imprint of a key hole, the ridges of a carved door. 

I gave my best puppy dog eyes I could possibly manage and bothered my mom until she found a key that could open the mystery door. I  needed  to find out where it led. She came back with an old, black key. The end had a big, black button on it. She ripped where the wallpaper met the edges of the door with it, unlocked the door, and- bricks. It led to a wall of bricks. It had been covered up when the house was divided into apartments, but my mom was having absolutely none of my questions about why it was so small. 

I went to bed instead of eating the slimy dinner my dad had tried to make. That night I dreamt of the door, of mice, swirling and dancing over the brick wall, connected by strings and ribbons. Then I woke to a real mouse squeaking and jumping around my bedroom. I followed it, of course, who wouldn’t follow a mouse that hopped like a kangaroo? It led me down the stairs, through the hall, and back into the living room. The door had managed to push itself back open — my mom hadn’t locked it earlier — and it- it kept going. It didn’t get stopped by brick, it  _kept hopping_.  I opened the door further to reveal a tunnel. 

It was glowing, blue and purple and pink and green. Wind pushed through my hair as it extended out and led to another, equally small door. I knew I had to go through. I crawled with wonder and awe at the colours. It felt like one of those fabric tunnels you’d have in a kid’s back garden, or-or at your school’s visit to the sport’s centre. I finally reached the other end and it opened into... my house. A mirror image of my apartment. But just a little different. The painting of the blue boy had been replaced; instead of having dropped his ice cream, he was now happily holding a cone with three scoops of vanilla. The kitchen was flooded with a warm, golden light, unlike the cold blue that usually filled my new house. I didn’t care about the differences. All I knew was I was hungry and something smelled  _ good _ . 

I followed the smell into the kitchen and it was  _ nothing  _ like my kitchen. It was warm, yellow, filled with decorations, and my mom was standing there among it all, cooking something. She was humming to herself. It was pitch black outside, a crescent moon hanging high in the sky. I asked her what she was doing up in the middle of the night, what could possibly need cooking so badly that she got up to make it at midnight. 

“You’re just in time for supper, dear,” she said as she turned around. I almost wish she hadn’t. That I’d just ran back to that door, crawled through that tunnel, and went right back to bed. She looked just like my mom. Same hair, same nose, same clothes. But no neck brace, and... She had _buttons_ for eyes. Sewn right into the sockets. No blood, no screams of agony, just pleased to see me with her big, round buttons. 

I said, “ _ You’re  _ not my mother. My mother doesn’t have—“ but I couldn’t get the words out. Buttons. My mother doesn’t have buttons. The woman who wasn’t my mother laughed and set down her bowl. “Do you like them?” she had asked. “I’m your Other Mother, silly. Now go tell your Other Father that supper’s ready.”

I was in too much shock to protest. There was a big, golden brown chicken in the oven and I just turned around and found his study. Instead of his desk and stacks on stacks of boxes, there was a deep red grand piano. Vinyls and a bass and a record player. My dad’s never been that into music. He turned around and he had two buttons stuck on his face too. My Other Father asked if I wanted to hear his new song. But that couldn’t be right. My father doesn’t know how to play piano. He said there was no need to know how. Two white, Disney style gloves reached out of the piano, leaping towards my face and controlled by long, jointed wires. “This piano plays me,” he’d said, and began to play. It was a joyful, catchy tune, filling the room as the piano spun slowly on the spot. I still remember the lyrics. 

‘ _ Making up a song about Coraline. She’s a peach, she’s a doll, she’s a pal of mine. She’s as cute as a button in the eyes of everyone who ever laid their eyes on Coraline. When she comes around exploring, Mom and I will never make it boring, our eyes will be on Coraline. _ ’

Despite how... weird it was to have a song written about me by my ‘dad,’ I was starting to warm up to the place. My mom and dad were making jokes. Laughing with me. Caring for me. Not snapping at me to leave them alone to work on some catalog. They wanted me around. 

The supper was the best thing I’d ever eaten, not ashamed to admit I would go back just to have that again. The plates spun so no one had to pass around dishes, the gravy was served on an actual train track and poured itself on the mashed potatoes, the drinks were dispensed from bottles on the chandelier in every flavour I could ever want. All my favourites and an endless supply of of mango milkshake. Before I’d even finished my plate, my Other Mother placed an enormous pink frosted cake on front of me. It iced and lit its candles itself. ‘ _ Welcome home! _ ’ with two loops in the O. 

They’d been waiting for me for a long time. Every child had their own pair of Other Parents. It wasn’t the same without me. My Other Mother wanted to play a game once I’d finished eating. By the tapping of her spindly fingers, I don’t think I wanted to play any games that evening. I didn’t even know what she meant. Hide and seek? She said hide and seek was perfect. Hide and seek, in the rain. It wasn’t raining. At least, I thought it wasn’t. A loud  crash and a flash on light in the window promptly proved me wrong. But the mud, the mud would get all over the house, all over our clothes, but they assured me. They loved mud here. Facials, baths, pies; it does a wonder on poison oak.

Thoroughly freaked out again, I told my Other Parents I should get to bed. Get back to my other-other parents. My bed had been made well in advance. The bedroom was wondering. Full of pink and purple and flying dragonfly toys, stuffed octopuses that could talk. The picture of my friends Id left on my bedside let me talk to my friends back in Michigan. No buttons to be seen in their eyes. Not a button to be seen. My Other Mother spread mud over my rash and I fell asleep within seconds, tucked into a cozy bed under a thick duvet. 

When I woke up, I was back in my house. Back on an uncomfortable mattress under a too-thin blanket. Grey-pink walls and a grey-pink ceiling and no toys. Just an unpacked suitcase. It was all a dream. But, my rash was gone. The door was back to leading to a wall of bricks. My real parents, of course, didn’t care for my dream. Didn’t believe I’d actually eaten a plate of chicken and wasn’t hungry for breakfast. My mom was back to her snippy self. Too busy to be bothered listening to me, I was tasked with visiting the neighbours. I was going to visit Miss. Spink and Forcible, but a pile of foul smelling mail addressed to Bobinsky sent me upstairs. 

He was the most eccentric man you’ll ever meet. A tall, Russian fellow with a medal for something, a moustache like whiskers and practically blue skin. I’m surprised this story isn’t about him being the monster. He kept a chicken in his musty apartment and ate beets like apples and hung upside down from god knows what as he took the misplaced mail from my arms. It was cheese samples. He needed to use stronger cheese to train his mice better for the circus. He leapt about the place like an acrobat, swinging alone the barrier and doing hand stands and flips all over the place. I couldn’t keep an eye on him for more than a few seconds at a time. I left as soon as possible. 

I got downstairs, fully intending to see the downstairs neighbours at last, when he yelled for me to wait from the balcony. He jumped over the railing and landed over me, stopping just in time to not crush me, only to tell me the mice had given him a message. They had said, “Do not go through little door.” I was confused. It was all bricked up, I couldn’t even if I wanted to, and  god  did I want to. It was much better than my boring little life. Mr. Bobinksy apologised, said they must have gotten mixed up. Called me Coraline instead of Caroline. 

I found my hat from a suitcase I left tied atop the car and went down the thin staircase to the basement. The knocker was heavy and iron, protruding from the mouths of two theatre masks; a happy and a sad one. The doormat read ‘No whistling in the house.’ I peered through the door window after receiving no response, but didn’t get to look long before I was bombarded with the faces of barking and tapping and jumping Scotty dogs. Miss Spink opened the door, about as annoyed with the dogs as I was. She called for Miriam — Miss Forcible — to put the kettle on for me while I played some cards with them. They were definitely married. Never got an outright answer, but it’d be stranger if they weren’t. They certainly argued like one. 

They had beaded curtains and frames with posters of their performances and shelves lined with tea all around their house. The only thing that really freaked me out was the dogs. They had three, and they had their Scotty dogs perform with them. They still had to the dogs they owned before they retired. Stuffed and dressed in angel costumes and lined up on shelves. There was something like nine of them, all in the same costume with golden wings and tinsel halos. I was offered candy but it was so old they stuck together and to the bowl. 

Miss Spink offered to read my tea leaves for me once I’d finished it. “Caroline,” she’d said. “Caroline, Caroline,  _Caroline_.  You’re in very great danger.”

Miss Forcible tried to read my leaves and said there was a ‘tall, handsome beast’ in my future. Spink said she saw a peculiar hand. Forcible twisted the cup and saw a giraffe. I was told to never wear green in my dressing room, acquire a very tall stepladder, and be very,  very  careful. I left soon after. It had gotten so foggy while I was downstairs that I couldn’t see anything but fluffy white smoke past the hem of my raincoat, but I still heard Wybie and his freaky little cat. He was carryinghim in his coat because he didn’t like to get his feet wet. I called him a wuss puss. They were hunting for banana slugs. 

I asked if he’d made the doll. He was the only one who’d met me before I got the thing and he seemed weird enough to make a doll that looks like someone he just met. Now i Know he’s weird enough to do that. But, he didn’t make it. He’d just found it that way. It was older than his grandma, probably older than the Pink Palace itself. I’d told him just how ridiculous that was, it had all my clothes and my hair, when he found Slugzilla — the biggest yellow slug I’d ever seen, and it was being shoved in my face with a pair of prongs. I shoved it away. He got me to take a photo shoot of him with it, not listening to a word of what I’d been saying. 

Wybie said he’d never been in the Pink Palace. His grandma told him it was too dangerous. She had a twin sister when she was a kid but she disappeared; she was stolen. He left before I could ask him about it more. 

That night, I laid out some cheese in hopes a mouse would lead me back to the door and it would be a tunnel to the Other World once again. This time I chased three mice down the stairs, through the hall, and slid right through the door, eager to see my Other Parents and have an even greater night than the last. I wasted no time in crawling through. I could hear my Other Mother humming the same tune as before from the kitchen again. She was cooking something, using the cheddar I’d laid out. She sent me off to find my Other Father in the garden. 

The garden was gorgeous, much nicer than the one in my real house. Humming birds and glowing trees and frogs with red button eyes. The flowers lit up as I walked past. I spotted my Other Father coming over a small hill, bright blue flowers sprouting and blooming as he crawled past atop a mechanical praying mantis that spat seeds out its mouth as it walked. He assured me it was  our  garden. Flowers sprung up between the cracks in the cobble stone, tickling me with kisses. My Other Father declared ‘daughter in distress’ and plucked something that sounded like a French horn when he blew into it as he came to the rescue. He climbed over the bridge, pumpkin fountains popping out from stream in his wake. With one smooth swing, he cut the dragon snappers with the arm of his mantis and handed them to me in a bouquet. They chirped in my hands as I told it was time for dinner, or- breakfast, or- food.

He tugged me onto the mantis, promising to show me something. The mantis green wings and started to flutter high above the garden, a picture slowly forming among the plants. It was my face. Rosy cheeks made with glowing red trees, the blue flowers making my hair, the pumpkins being my eyes, and a glowing greenhouse making my dragonfly clasp. It was incredible. My Other Mother knew I’d like it. She knows me like the back of my hand. 

Me and my Other Father ate way more than we should have for dinner-breakfast-food, while my Other Mother didn’t eat a crumb. Mr. Bobinsky had invited me to see his jumping mice. Wybie had said it was all in his head, but I knew he was wrong. And, just my luck, he was at the door, ready to take me to see the show. I groaned and moaned as he walked himself on in, but he didn’t say a word. He just smiled his crooked smile and stared with his beady, black buttons. 

“I thought you’d like him more, if he spoke a little less,” my Other Mother said. So, she fixed him. He couldn’t talk at all. I was fond of the idea. He was still cheerful, letting me know that no, it didn’t hurt when she made him unable to talk. We followed a little, blue blimp up the stairs as it flew through Mr. Bobinsky’s window and we knocked on the door. It spun and flipped with us stuck to one side like a cartoon until it launched us into the room. It was lit with fairy lights, with a revolving popcorn dispenser with a chicken on top. Little canons that shot out cotton candy lined the walkway leading up to a tiny, red and white striped tent. I got some popcorn. The chicken pecked at a plastic corn on the cob, clucked, and popcorn fell out its butt onto a cardboard container. 

We crawled in through the tent as an announcement from Bobinsky let us know the show was about to begin. It was the size of a whole new house on the inside, spotlights dancing around the walls as he introduced his astounding, stupendulous, and amazing jumping mouse circus. 

The blimp waddled through the air until it nose dived to the middle of the stage and exploded into a group of mice. They jumped up and landed atop one another, all dressed in little red jackets and tiny hates, their tails spelling out Coraline. They played the trumpet and drums, jumping on balls and all around in a circle and in a star, a spiral, until the centre began to rise. A tall tower, taller than me, with a spiral leading up to it rose in the centre of the stage, each and every mouse climbing on and leading to the ringmaster mouse, balanced on a ball at the very top. It rolled down the spiral, each mouse jumping off just before it got toppled over, still blowing their trumpets and banging their drums. It reached the bottom and tower fell apart, revealing Mr. Bobinksy dressed in full circus getup. He thanked us for coming and called for the mice to come back. They crawled up his sleeves, one by one, leaving no evidence there ever was a circus of mice in the first place apart from the wriggling, writhing lumps under his jacket. The last one jumped up his arms and landed under his hat. He kissed me hand and suddenly, I was back in back. Even sooner after that, I was back in my house. The cheddar was gone and the drab house was back. I went down to the door, only to find it wouldn’t open. It didn’t leave its frame, just moved an inch before creaking back into place. It was locked. 

My mom was taking me out for school shopping that day, and I found a pair of gloves that I had just fallen in love with. Orange and green and black stripes, and they fit me perfectly. They were on sale and everything. Without even taking one look at them, my mom told me to put them back. But I wanted to stand out. The school uniform was all grey, near white, but no one in school would have stripy gloves. My Other Mother would get them for me, and I let her know that. I huffed and put them back. 

I asked her what she thought was behind the door. She didn’t know — not a family of Jones imposters, that’s for sure. Then why’d she lock it? The rats had left crap by the door. Thought I’d feel safer with it locked. I corrected her. They were  _ jumping mice _ , and the dreams weren’t dangerous. They were the most fun I’d had since we moved to those bloody apartments. She tried to cheer me up but I didn’t listen. No way could a school be fun with uniforms like that. 

There was hardly any food left in the fridge. My mom left to go food shopping, promising to make it up to me if the catalog goes well. 

As soon as the car left, I searched for the key. It wasn’t in the key door, but I found it hung up above a door. I stacked all the books I could find on to a chair and knocked it off before climbing down and heading back into the living room. I unlocked the door, squeezed my eyes shut, and threw it open. Hesitantly, I cracked open one eye at a time and gazed upon and long, purple and blue tunnel. It wasn’t a dream. I wasn’t dreaming. I was ecstatic. I crawled as fast as I could through the other door. The kitchen was filled with treats and snacks. It was still night outside. 

There was a note on the table from my Other Mother. Miss Spink and Miss Forcible had invited me to see their show. She’d left me an outfit; black jeans, blue boots and a blue jumper covered in stars. I headed out when I heard a meow from above me. It was the stray cat that Wybie carried around with him. I followed him as he jumped down from the overhang to the fence and said, “You must be the Other Cat.”

In a deep, gravelly voice, it looked up from licking its paw and said, “No.” I was astounding. It was  talking.  In  English.  “I’m not the Other  _ Anything _ , I’m  _me_. ” He certainly didn’t have buttons for eyes, but if he was the same cat, how could he talk? He just could, he told me. No room for questions. He started to leave, mad I’d called him a wuss puss. He forgave me fast enough. He said he’d been coming here for a while and walked behind a branch, but didn’t come out on the other side of it. Just disappeared and popped out a hole in the tree trunk he was climbing around. He said it was a game he played with her. She hates cats and tries to keep him out. He stuck his head back in the hole and it appeared out of a hole in another trunk. She can’t keep him out. He came and went as he pleased. She wasn’t like amy mother he’d ever known. I didn’t understand. The Other Mother was amazing! 

He climbed further up the trunk, towards the roof. He said, “You probably think this world is a dream come true, but you’re wrong. The Other Wybie told me so.” But that couldn’t be write, he doesn’t talk. Perhaps not me, but the cat could understand him. I stopped listening when he started to go on about cats being superior and he ran off to chase something he’d heard. I went down to see this show Miss Spink and Forcible had put on. 

A Scotty dog led me tok my seat through a theatre filled with other Scotty dogs. Wagging tails poked out the backs of every seat. The show started as soon as I sat down. A large fish was on stage and the top was pulled up to reveal the top half of Miss Spink. Her buttons were painted half purple and half white. She had a quick number about being a siren, but she didn’t fit the part at all. The scene changed to reveal Miss Forcible standing in a giant seashell, barely covered past a few stuck on sequins, her buttons half blue and half white. She, too, sang a quick number. 

The two women started rapidly changing switching between each other’s scenes, making fun of each other until the whole thing fell apart, props falling all over the place. The curtains closed and a Scotty dog pushed out a small barrel of water. The spotlights led up to ceiling, much taller than I’d noticed before. Spink and Forcible were standing right at the top on the edges of wobbling diving boards, still arguing. They jumped once, twice, before they unzipped their skin from head to toe and revealed two new women. They looked like the women in their posters from their glory days. Silky, long hair, one in green and one in pink. They met in the middle, each holding on to a trapeze swing. The dogs barked as they started the second round of their performance, leaping and swinging and singing their own praise as they flew above the audience until they swung back round and grabbed me right out of my seat. I screamed as I flew high into the air, limp as a rag doll as they tossed me by my ankles and wrists. I landed among the support beams and they dived head first into the barrel, somehow both fitting inside of it. 

I started to slip from the beam as they rise in a tower out of the barrel. I fell and landed on one foot on Miss Forcible’s hand. The dogs started to bark and howl once again as Wybie through a rose into my hand. It was  magic. 

My Other Parents greeted me at the door and took me inside. My Other Mother asked if I liked being here. Of course I did. It was wonderful. I’d never be bored another day of my life. She offered to let me stay forever, if I wanted to. With just one little... _condition_. 

She handed me a blue and black striped box. It was for me, their little doll. I pulled the top off and peered inside. There was a needle, threaded with black string attached to a spool, and two shiny, black buttons. 

“Black is traditional,” she said. But if I wanted pink, vermillion, chartreuse — though I might make her jealous. I yelled at them that there was no chance in hell they’d be seeing buttons into my eyes, but they needed a yes. So sharp, I wouldn’t feel a thing. I was horrified. They only wanted what was best for me. I knew that wasn’t right. I had to go to bed. I wasn’t tired. I certainly wasn’t hungry, I just need to leave. Sleep on it, I told them. She wasn’t worried. I’d see things her way soon. 

I locked my toys, my picture of my friends in my toy chest and tried my best to sleep. I was going home and I would  not  be coming back. I fell asleep eventually, I had to have. I know I did. But when I woke up and threw the duvet off, I was still in a pretty pink room and it was still the middle of the night. Annoyed, I marched down the stairs and found my Other Father in the study, limply playing one out of tune key on the piano. I asked him where the Other Mother was. He said, “All be swell as soon Mother’s refreshed. Her strength is our strength.” The gloves hands jolted out of the piano and covered his mouth, waggling a finger, and turned him back around. “Mustn’t talk when Mother’s not here.” I told him I was going to find the Other Wybie if he wouldn’t talk. 

“No point,” he said. He turned around, pulling the corners of his mouth down into a disturbing frown, an unnatural D-shape replacing his mouth. “He pulled a  _looong_ face , and Mother didn’t like it.” The gloves grabbed his face yet again and yanked him back round. I ran out of there and out to the where I’d found the well. The barren trees had been replaced with apple trees. A meow pulled me out my thoughts. 

The cat asked me what I thought I was doing. I was getting out of here. Was it not obvious? It was then I noticed the trees becoming more... abstract. Thinner. Leaves looking like pixels as the ground faded and crackled into an endless, pure white. There was no well, no anything. She had only made what she knew would impress me. But  _ why?  _ Why did she want  _ me?  _

“She wants something to love, I think,” the cat said. “Something that isn’t her. Or, maybe, she’d just _love_ something to eat.” We kept walking as I let that sink in. Bit of a wild thing to tell an eleven year old, but still. As we walked on, the house started to slowly reform, piece by piece, filling in like strokes of paint on a canvas. 

There was a toot of a horn and the cat pounced, coming out of the bush chasing a jumping mouse in a little red coat. He caught it under his paws and hit down into its back. The red coat disappeared, revealing a long, grey and balding rat. 

I used a cane to break the lock off the living room doors and crept inside. Before I could even get through the door, a wardrobe scuttled in my way and planted itself against the wall, right in front of my exit. My way home. The room gradually lit up in awful reds and purples and greens as the couch spun and revealed the Other Mother, still wearing my mom’s face. She said even the proudest spirit can be broken. With love. I was knocked into a walking chair and offered a chocolate. Dark, wriggling things in a heart shaped box. Cocoa Beetles from Zanzibar. She plucked on from the box and but down with a sucking crunch through its shell. I said no, needless to say. I  wanted  to be home with my real mom and dad. 

Now, that wasn’t any way to talk to your mother. But she wasn’t my mother. She demanded I apologise. I refused. She gave me to the count of three. She started to count... and stretch. She grew taller, and taller, features sharpening, arms and hands and legs elongating. She looks nothing like my mom anymore. Just a crude impression of what could have been her. She screamed as she finished counting and dragged me by my nose to the hallway mirror. She tossed me through the glass like I weighed nothing, poking her head in after me. I could leave once I’d learned to be a loving daughter. I pounding on the wall, but it was solid. Nothing like the jelly I’d just fallen through. 

An echo of a whisper bounced around the room and I spun around to see three glowing lumps under white sheets. 

“Hush, and shush, for the Beldam might be listening. I grew closer and gently pulled the sheet away. Three children, see through and pale green were huddled in the corner of a cot. Their eyes were buttons, but I knew they hadn’t always been. One was a young boy, hair curled up like horns. The next was a girl with a flower in her hair and a tattered dress. The third was a tall and lanky girl with a hat. Her face was contorted into a silent scream, mouth open wider than I thought was possible. I asked who they were. The boy floated forward. 

“We don’t remember our names,” he said, “but I remember my true mommy.” I asked where they were there. The Beldam. The Other Mother. The smaller girl said, “She spied on our lives, through the little doll’s eyes.”

“And saw that we weren’t happy,” the boy said. 

“So she lured as away,” the taller girl said. “With treasures, and treats and games to play.”

“Gave all that we asked.”

“Yet, we still wanted more.”

“So we let her see the buttons.” 

Their mouths didn’t move as they spoke, they simply floated and danced around in a synchronised routine as they told me their story. The Beldam said she loved them, but locked them behind the mirror and ate up their lives. I had to beat her. She couldn’t keep me in there forever. They asked that I find their eyes and free them. Their eyes had been hidden, keeping them there forever. I promised to try, when a pair of hands tugged me out, back through the mirror. I fought them off, slamming them into the walls on either side of me, desperate to be let go. I pulled off their mask and there he was. Other Wybie, covering his face. I pulled his hands back and found that his mouth had been pulled up at the corners by string, sewn stuck into his cheeks. The Other Mother had done it. I pulled the string out and he dragged me through to the living room, knocking over the wardrobe that covered the door. 

The Beldam shouted if it was me down there. It opened to a dusty, dirt-brown tunnel, filled with old shoes and toys and gloves stuck to the walls, covered in cobwebs. I tried to get Other Wybie to come with me, but he couldn’t go. He took off his glove and blew his own hand away. It had turned to dust, just with him opening the door. She was getting closer, coming down the stairs. Wybie shoved me through and closed the door. 

I practically sprinted through the tunnel, running through cobwebs and tripping over my feet until I tumbled through the door and into my real home. I slammed the door and locked it, loudly declaring that I was home! Home, at last! But I got no answer. Static silence as I ran through every room. I found the groceries my mom had gotten. They’d gone mouldy, covered in a cloud of flies. The doorbell rang and I flung it open, expecting to find my parents, but-! It was just the Wybie that talks. 

He needed the doll back. It was his grandma’s sister’s and she was mad about him taking it. It took me a second, but I connected the dots. I’d just met this missing sister. She was the smaller girl, locked behind a mirror. I dragged Wybie inside, ignoring his protests. He had the audacity for thinking I was weird when I showed him the door but wouldn’t open it. When I told him that she couldn’t leave without her eyes — none of the ghosts can. And when I explained what the doll does, how I’d love to get rid of it, screw the Other Mother to hell and back. I threw my shoes at him and he called me crazy. Can’t say I’d blame him. I chased him right house. 

I found my mom’s phone in her car and tried to call my dad. He didn’t pick up. They had to be home, right? Their car was here, the groceries were here, but why weren’t they? Spink and Forcible weren’t any help. Spink was too busy making a pair of wings for Angus — just looking ahead — and Forcible was more concerned over not having a ride to the theatre. She got out a bowl of hard candy from 1921 and Spink started hacking into it with speed and strength I’d never expected from her. She plucked out a triangular, green stone with a hole in the centre. I was confused. The hell was I supposed to do with that? How would that help with my missing parents. It was just a stone. Helps with lost things. I left when they started to argue again. 

That night, I tucked myself into my parents’ bed, setting up the pillows, my dad’s glasses and my mom’s neck brace to look like them and I went to bed. I was woken by a set of paws prodding at my nose and a wide pair of blue eyes stuck right in front of mine, purring consistently ringing through the air. I asked if he knew where my parents were and he blinked. I followed him to the hall mirror. There, in the reflection, was my parents. They were covered in snow, holding each other and shivering. My mom spelled out help us in the frost. I broke the mirror with how hard i pounded on it. The cat just sat and watched. 

I followed him again through to my parents room, asking how this happened, and he pulled out a doll. One side was my dad, the other my mom. They had button eyes. They were sewn right up the middle. I burned the doll. 

With a deep discomfort, I knew what I had to do. I looked into my mom’s favourite snow globe and knew they wouldn’t come back if I didn’t go and get them myself. I took everything I needed. Shears, the stone, a candle. The cat followed and said, “You know you’re walking right into her trap.” But I had to go back. I couldn’t not go back. He told me to challenge her. She had a thing for games. May not play fair, but she won’t say no.”

A gust of wind blew my candle out and the door opened. The cat ran off. My mom was behind the door. My real mom. Neck brace and all. She said I’d come back for her, she was happy to see me. I ran through the tunnel and into her arms, holding her as close as I could. 

“Darling,” she said. “Why would you run away from me?” A hand curled around my shoulder. It was long and bony, and I shoved her away. It was the tall, skinny Other Mother again. She ripped off the brace and hummed a laugh. She had the Other Father sit me in a chair. His face looked like melting wax, body short and swollen like a pumpkin. His hair and hands had turned to root. She locked the door and covered it with the wardrobe again, and swallowed the key. He told me there was only one key and she dragged him out to have him tend the garden. I heard the squeaking of hands on wet glass but I couldn’t find the source before the Beldam called me in for breakfast. 

She was in the kitchen, humming the same tune as she had before. The buttons were placed just so in front of me on the table. I struck a deal. Her singing stopped the second I said game. I said I wanted to play a finding game. She tapped her nails, long and pointed like spider legs, and asked what, exactly, would I be finding? I would be finding my real parents and the eyes of the ghost children. If I don’t find them, she could keep me, love me forever. Sew the buttons in my eyes. If I won, she’d let me go. She’d let everyone go. But I wouldn’t shake her hand unless I was given a clue. 

“In each of three wonders Ive made just for you, a ghost eye is lost in plain sight.” No clue for my parents. She just tapped her button with her pointed, black nails and laughs. I sighed and agreed to the deal, the tapping continuing, but when I turned around, it was just the dripping faucet. I look through the window to the garden. I knew where I had to go. 

The plants, once beautiful were now disturbing. The beating heart plants gross, the frogs just slimy, the dragon snappers just an annoyance as I stomped on their heads. I didn’t even notice the bright blue sundew plants until they were wrapping and rolling up around me. The shears went flying out my bag as I tumbled to the ground, being dragged towards the gaping maw of the well. I just barely managed to grab the shears and cut myself free. I wasn’t given even a moment to catch my breath before the humming birds were flying away with my stone. I knocked them right out the sky with my hat. Sand spilled out of them as I wondered why they want that little stone, of all things. I looked through the hole. The world had turned from vibrant orange to shades of grey. I looked around until I spotted a glowing red ball. That must have been the eye. I took the stone down from my eye and the praying mantis jumped to action, the Other Father, body fully replaced with a pumpkin sitting on top, hands controlled by the gloves. 

He wailed that he was _sorry_ and didn’t _want_ to hurt me, Mother was making him do it as he chased me down, the arms of the mantis stabbing for me as it followed over the bridge. His voice was distorted, like there were multiple of him speaking over each other. Like a glitching computer. He kicked at the wires and freed his hand, ripping off the handle to machine and tossing it to me. I just managed to catch it before he sunk into the river, breaking through the bridge. It all turned to stone, a monotone light grey. I never got to thank him. I heard a faint rumbling and looked up to see a shadow slowly covering the moon. I knew I was running out of time. 

The next was in the theatre. Miss Spink’s singing floated through the door but no Spink could be found. The torch the Scotty dog used to take me to my seat was laying on the ground and I turned it. The ceiling was covered in Scotty dogs, now adorned with bag wings as they hung upside down from the support beams. One growled at me until I turned off the torch. The spotlight turned on with a crash and shone down on a large, wrapped hard candy. I could see a vague outline of two people, squished and contorted into one another. I held up the stone and saw two gummy hands, arms twisting like candy cane stripes, fingers interlocked, and holding the second eye inside them. I reached through the wrapping paper and peeled the green and pink hands apart, finding the eye was the pearl in Miss Forcible’s ring. I grabbed it but the hands clamped down on my own, the heads of Spink and Forcible tearing through towards me, screaming for me to leave it, let them have it, let them  keep  it. I was a thief, I had to give it back. I threw my torch at the dogs, ducking just in time for them to come tearing into the two women, tangled amongst their sticky limbs. The theatre, too, turned to stone under my feet. Her web was unwinding. 

Last, I knew, was the circus. Wybie’s clothes were handing like a flag from the pole, empty and dusty. The door opened by itself and I walked in, greeted by Mr. Bobinksy. A really lazy version of him. His clothes flopped and he wriggled around the floor, speaking strange mixes of English and Russian. He called me Carolbushka. I corrected him. He held out a hand, asking if what was in his palm was what I was looking for. A red ball with a star on it. The ball the jumping mouse had danced on. His gloved fingers were splayed and curling in a way that was almost like how a hand should work. I lifted the stone and the ball glowed. I went to grab it but he ducked and crab walked to the tent. 

He said, “You think winning is good thing? You’ll just go home bored, neglected, same as always.” He spiralled up the support beams, reaching out to me as he hung from the ceiling. “Stay here, with us. We will listen to you and laugh with you.” He fell on his head with a thump but his limbs quickly picked himself up. They moved like boiled spaghetti as he disappeared into the tent. I crawled in behind him. He was perched like a jumping mouse on a ball, stuck among a mountain of cheese, the tail of his coat waving and wagging in the air. I lifted the stone to my eye. The ball was in place of his head. He said I could have whatever I wanted here. Forever. But he didn’t get it. He couldn’t. He was just a copy he made of the real Bobinsky. His clothing was covered with moving lumps and bumps and he growled, “Not even that, anymore,” voice distorting and layering like the Other Father’s had. I ripped the hat away and was greeted with screaming rats, clamouring to protect the eye. His jacket and pants flapped about as they crawled and ran out the tent. I followed and was greeted with cotton candy firing at full speed into me at all angles. The rat was getting away with the eye, rolling on a wheel of cheese. I tried to throw the stone at it, knock it off balance, but it dodged and flew off the balcony. I tumbled out and hit the railing. It came crashing down to the ground with me on it. When I looked up, after taking a moment to realise I was in the grass, the moon was almost covered with the shadow of a button. 

I was out of time. I’d lost. I’d lost _everything_. I hadn’t saved my parents. I hadn’t saved the ghost children. I’d  _lost_.  The shadow was slowly closing in on me, when a meow reaches my ears. It had stopped, and the rat was laying, ripped open with sand pouring out, next to the last eye. The cat had gotten the eye. The grass turned to stone along with the house as it held the eye in my hand. And I made the mistake of reminding her I still needed to find my parents. The shadow covered the moon completely. The very earth trembling and started to deteriorate under my step, melting into the white nothing that lined the outside of what she had made. It was unravelling before my eyes. I grabbed the cat and sprinted inside, just before the ground fell away under my feet, and I slammed the door. 

The wallpaper peeling up the ceiling in rolls as I made my way to the living room. The Beldam appeared under a green light. She was even less like my mom than before, barely even an attempt at looking like her. Her skin was paper white and covered in black cracks, her skin tight to her ribcage and suctioned to her spine. Her hands and arms were replaced by needles. Sewing needles, somehow attached at each joint. She walked on four, needly legs, clunking over the wooden floor. She pointed out the cat, calling him vermin. But he was my friend. I told her so. 

I showed her the ghost eyes but didn’t let her take them. I still needed my parents. She burned the stone before I could use it to find my parents. I had to think smart to find my parents, and a way out. She wouldn’t let me go even if I did win. I told her they were in the tunnel between the Pink Palaces. She laughed and I looked for where they really were. In the snow globe. They were in my mom’s favourite snow globe. She wretched and coughed up the key, unlocking the door to prove I was wrong. She pulled out the sewing needle and thread, I’m sure the buttons were soon to follow. But I told her that, no. I’m.  _Not_. 

I grabbed the cat and threw him as hard as I could at the Beldam’s face. He yowled, she screamed, and I shoved the snow globe in my satchel. He ripped her buttons straight out of her head and before I could find my way to the open door, she slammed into the wall, screaming that I was a horrible, cheating girl. The floorboards peeled away to reveal a spider web that plummeted into the white vastness and I feel right down in it. She shrieked with what could have been a laugh as she leapt down to wear I was, trying to crush me. I wasted no time in climbing up the web on the outside of the thick, black string. She screamed for me to come back, that I was a selfish brat, and listened for where I was. Through my terrified fumbling and shaking, as I crawled through to the inside of the web, my back snagged on the string, sending a ripple of noise as I tugged it free. She’d found me. 

I climbed faster than I’d climbed in my life, tugging the key out the lock and crawling in through the door. She was tearing after me, much faster than I was. I was inches away from pulling it shut when ten needles pushed through and pulled it back open. She screamed, “How  _ dare  _ you disobey your  _ mother! _ ” I kicked her in the face, sending her reeling and I tried to close the door again. I wasn’t strong enough, she was about to get through, about to get me, when three pairs of ghostly hands floated from the eyes and started pulling with me. The Beldam managed to get one hand through, her skeletal wrist trapped between the door and the frame. It snapped right off as the door finally closed and I locked it immediately. I took a moment to catch my breath, to calm my beating heart, but it was short lived before the door jumped towards me. I flew backwards and ran as fast as I could, the door growing ever closer as the Beldam shrieked and wailed from the other side. She cried for me to not leave her, she’ll die without me. As if I cared if she died. The tunnel shook back and forth with her banging and I barely managed to close the door in time for the tunnel to collapse and close completely. The wall heaved with the impact, but the door stayed locked. I was safe. I was home. And covered in cobwebs. 

I checked my bag; a pearl, the end of manual driving stick, and a rubber ball. As I crawled away from the door, my hand landed in a glittery puddle. The snow globe was broken, dripping from the mantelpiece. My parents came home seconds later, covered in snow, but unharmed. I hugged them, told them I missed them, but they didn’t have even a clue what I was talking about. Mom only noticed the broken snow globe and my cut knee. Dad said he only told me to count the windows, not out my knee through them. They told me we were going out for dinner, and to get cleaned up. We were going to celebrate their catalog. I don’t think even a day had passed since mom left to get groceries. 

We went out, had some good food that wasn’t made by a child eating monster, and I went to bed. We talked about the garden party we had planned and mom snuck a box under my duvet. It was the gloves I’d wanted so bad. She kept her promise. The cat came in through my window and curled up on my bed — he wasn’t too upset that I threw him at the Other Mother’s head — and I knew just how to give the souls the freedom they deserved. I put the eyes under my pillow and laid down, falling asleep almost instantly. I was met with vibrant blue, swirling skies, and three golden angels. It was the three children. They told me it was over for them, but not me. The Beldam was still alive and would do anything for her key, to pass it on to the next poor child that moves in. The eyes had been smashed to pieces when I woke up. I had to get rid of it. 

I made a beeline for the well, wrapping my shoulders in a blanket and singing the song my real dad would sing for me, wearing the key on a necklace around my neck. I walked past the cherry blossoms, their petals spilling along the path, until I reached the fairy circle. I used a thick stick to pry the lid open and pulled they let out through my collar. I was about to take it off when something scuttling and clinking yanked it aside, dragging me along the ground by my throat. I couldn’t breathe, That-  _ detached hand  _ was going to  _ kill _ me. Then, a familiar horn rang through the dead silence of night and a pair of headlights lit me up. Wybie. 

He let out a cry and soared down the hill, scooping up the hand with his clamps. He circled back round but it crawled over the front of his helmet, covering his goggles. He went flying off the motorcycle and down into the well, just managed to grab onto the edge. The hand clambered out, climbing over his back and hair, knocking one of his hands off the ledge. He screamed as it reeled back for another go at him, but I trapped it under the blanket I’d brought. It tore right through it. I yelped. It tried to lunge at me but a rock landed on top of it and smashed it into tiny pieces. Wybie was standing above it, arms out and heaving. I wrapped the rock and the remains of the hand in the blanket, tying the top with the string on the key. He threw it down the well together. It had to have taken at least six seconds to reach the water. I hope it was much deeper than where the water had filled it. We closed it over. For good. 

Wybie apologised for calling me crazy — for not believing me. He said his grandma had shown him a picture of her twin sister and herself, the twin matching the description I gave of that ghost to a T. She was holding a doll in a little matching dress with matching blonde pigtails. I told him to bring her by the house tomorrow and he went home. 

We explained everything to her at the garden party. She seemed happy to know her sister was okay now. I just hope what I did worked. 

ARCHIVIST

Statement ends. 

Well... That was...

CORALINE

It’s alright if you don’t believe me. I just thought I’d drop on by and get a record of it while I’m visiting. 

ARCHIVIST

Right... I know you said we needn’t do any follow up, but it’s only customary for cases, so any details you’d be willing to leave to help with that would be much appreciated.

CORALINE

Got it. 

[ Click ]

[ Click ]

ARCHIVIST

Ah, the Beldam. An old friend of both the Stranger and the Web. It is unclear which she belongs to specifically, but both take a liking to her, that’s for certain. She is known for taking children, but for what reason? No one truly knows. What we _do_ know, however, is that she relies almost entirely on the natural curiosity of children to lure her into her traps. We have statements from multiple people who have lived in the Pink Palace, dating all the way back to 1684, before Jonah Magnus was even alive. How he came into possession of these statements, I am not sure, especially since they’re all from America, but we have them nonetheless. 

As for follow up, there’s really not much to add. We asked our sister organisation, the Usher Foundation to do some digging but didn’t get too much. Mr. Lovat has confirmed his experiences with Mrs. Jones, and his grandmother, were she still alive, would do the same. Mrs. Jones’ parents also seemed to remember a mention of an ‘Other Mother’ while Mrs. Jones was a child and her wife, Mrs. Harrison also knows of this experience. She was convinced it happened.

The Pink Palace in Oregon now has new tenants, all of which either gave no response to our emails or didn’t have anything to tell us. No knowledge on the Jones’ or anything possibly supernatural in the apartments, though I would hardly call them that. Theres the upstairs room, the basement, and the rest of the house divided into three houses. 

It took some effort but we did manage to contact one Sergey Bobinsky, and he launched into quite a rant about ‘Little Coraline.’ All he had to say is that Mrs. Jones enjoyed his mice shows and was a lovely, supportive child. He knew nothing of Beldams and the supernatural. I can confirm that there was a small door in the wall of one room, though it has long since been  actually  bricked up and the wallpaper replaced. 

This case has been well and truly wrapped up by Mrs. Jones herself, I must say. Quite nearly as well. A true feat for an eleven year old. There’s... not much else I can say here, really. Other than there is one thing that bothers me slightly. The Beldam controls the Other People within her world, the Other Father and Other Wybie, going off this statement, so how could they help Mrs. Jones? And _why?_ Perhaps, seeing as they were made with the sole purpose of wanting to care for and protect Mrs Jones, that bled into their actions to prevent her being killed. The Other Wybie truly saw her as a friend, and the Other Father truly saw her as his daughter, who he needed to protect.

Well... End recording, I suppose. 

[ Click ]


End file.
